THE SUNDAY NOTEBOOK: The real endorsement is Tuesday

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ON TUESDAY, voters in Fitchburg and Lunenburg Precinct B will head to the polls to decide which candidates move past the primary to the March 1 special election for state representative.

Voters may not have made up their minds, but a number of local and state organizations and individuals have chosen who to throw their support behind.

Democrat Stephan Hay received endorsements from the Fitchburg firefighters' union, the Fitchburg police union, the local laborers', carpenters' and plumbers' unions, the Massachusetts Correctional Officers' Federated Union, the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund, and state Reps. Hank Naughton, Dennis Rosa and Jon Zlotnik. He also received the Sentinel & Enterprise endorsement for the Democratic primary.

Maxwell

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Democrat Kimatra Maxwell received endorsements from the SEIU Massachusetts state council, Mass Alliance, Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus, the Massachusetts chapter of the National Organization for Women, and the Massachusetts chapter of the National Association of Social Workers.

Democrat Joe Byrne said he has close friends among Fitchburg elected officials but didn't want to ask any of them for endorsements because they serve on the City Council with Hay. He did not list any endorsements, although School Committee member Sally Cragin backed Byrne in a letter to the editor.

Republican write-in candidate Dean Tran said he did not receive any union endorsements, but added, "My primary support has come from individuals within the district and it is they who will decide the next state representative.

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He did receive the Sentinel & Enterprise endorsement for the Republican primary.

GIVE THAT woman a Boulder.

Fitchburg Access Television's board of directors has named former Fitchburg Mayor Lisa Wong this year's recipient of the Boulder Award. The award, which this year will be given out for the 20th time, honors "outstanding contributions to civic life through the use of public communications," according to FATV.

Byrne

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Past recipients include former state transportation official and Fitchburg City Councilor Ellen DiGeronimo, former Fitchburg State University President Robert V. Antonucci and longtime Fitchburg business owner Paul Gauvin. The awards dinner, which also honors member volunteers, will be held May 9 at the Oak Hill Country Club. Tickets go on sale in April.

Former Lancaster Selectman Susan Smiley recently announced her bid to be re-elected Republican State Committeewoman in the Worcester Middlesex District.

Smiley, who as selectman was the target of a successful recall election seeking her ouster in 2014, has spent the last six years serving the district, which includes the towns of Berlin, Bolton, Clinton, Lancaster, Lunenburg, Sterling, Townsend and Westminster as well as the cities of Fitchburg, Gardner and Leominster.

Tran

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"My engagement with local and state party leaders has grown our Republican participation to elect a successful and more-than-capable Republican governor and lieutenant governor," Smiley said in a press release announce her re-election bid.

The statement also included endorsements from Gov. Charlie Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito.

WHEN IS dead, dead? That was the big question that didn't have a clear answer after Fitchburg native Dana L. William shot himself in the head when law-enforcement authorities attempted to take him into custody Wednesday morning. William was wanted for killing his estranged wife's stepfather and kidnapping her mother in Amelia County, Virginia.

Smiley

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The Worcester County District Attorney's Office insisted on Thursday that William was alive, despite what must have been a significant head wound.

However, Virginia Commonwealth Attorney Lee Harrison offered up his definition of dead as when a patient is "brain dead."

"He's brain dead, so for all intent and purpose, he's dead," said Harrison on Thursday when efforts were being made to confirm William's condition from every available source.

We figured we'd consult the Merriam-Webster dictionary for a definition. "Dead: No longer alive or living, no longer having life; not able to feel or move; very tired," is how Webster's defines dead.

Given that, it's reasonable to assume everyone was right.

But, of course, the physical, philosophical and spiritual arguments about what is life, and death, remain a matter of personnel perspective and belief system.

On Friday, the DA's Office announced that William had met its definition of dead.

TWENTY-ONE YEARS have elapsed between the time a young Charlie Baker assembled his first state budget in 1995 and last week when Baker, now governor, pitched his $39.6 billion spending plan for next year.

For those who like math, the difference between the first budget Baker shepherded through from start to finish as then Gov. William Weld's budget secretary and the document he put forward on Wednesday is about $22.7 billion.

Government has gotten more expensive over the past two decades.

Few lawmakers will argue with the value of Baker's push to trim the reliance on one-time revenues to balance the budget down to $253 million, or sock away at least $206 million in the "rainy day" fund. But that doesn't mean they're happy with what the picture looks like after those colors are taken off the palette.

Multiple senators criticized Baker's $72 million increase for Chapter 70 aid to local schools, a modest 1.6 percent increase that Sen. Jason Lewis described as the smallest increase in the "past half decade."

The left-leaning Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center also questioned Baker's decision to push for a corporate tax reform that would save companies that do business in multiple states about $67 million a year when fully implemented in four years, at the expense of pumping those dollars into transportation or education.

Eventually, if history serves, the growing drumbeat from some of the more liberal corners of the Statehouse for more revenues will lead to a concrete proposal, but for now House Speaker Robert DeLeo prefers to echo Baker's no-new-taxes-or-fees mantra. In fact, another tax increase may have to wait until 2018 when advocates hope to have a constitutional amendment on the ballot to tax millionaires an additional 4 percent on all earnings above $1 million.

THE REVENUE Committee voted 12-4 last week to recommend the constitutional amendment, but it's unclear whether it will surface for a debate this week when the House and Senate convene for another installment of the Constitutional Convention. The amendment needs only 50 votes from the 200-member Legislature to be advanced to the next Legislature, which will be seated in 2017.

THE "BENATOR," regardless of what happens this year, won't be around to see that happen. Sen. Benjamin Downing, of Pittsfield, announced last week that he would be keeping a promise to himself to serve 10 years and leave, and won't be seeking re-election in the fall. Never mind that at 34, with a decade of experience, Downing is/was a rising a star in the Democratic Party. His departure will also remove another valued leader from Senate President Stanley Rosenberg's Senate that has already seen Anthony Petruccelli depart and will watch Sen. Dan Wolf leave alongside Downing next January.

"When people leave it's really hard, because the new people come in. They've got all the energy and excitement, but they don't have the institutional memory. They don't have the experience in the Senate...But make no mistake, everyone in the Senate is fully engaged and these three will certainly be missed but the bench is very deep," Rosenberg said.

WHILE THE House and Senate will take some time now to review the governor's budget and jobs bills, there were some pieces ready for action this week.

The House finally decided it was time to take up Sen. James Timilty's bill to ban the use or operation of tanning beds by anyone under 18, and the Senate, over the objections of business groups such as Associated Industries of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts High Technology Council, voted in an update to the state's equal-pay law that could become a more contentious issue as it now moves across the hall into the House's court.

The Senate also passed legislation to require the state to develop a climate change preparedness plan and to set interim carbon emission-reduction goals in 2030 and 2040 to keep the state on track for its 2050 target.

STORY OF THE WEEK: Inching closer to $40 billion in spending, Baker budget shows restraint, but leaves some wanting.

Contributors to the Sunday Notebook included Sentinel & Enterprise staffers, Anna Burgess, Peter Jasinski, City Editor Cliff Clark and Editor Charles St. Amand, and State House News Service reporter Matt Murphy.

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